Thomson Reuters in the US has been referred to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by the Newspaper Guild of New York for planned cutbacks to the pay packages of journalists and other workers that are members of the union.

But in this instance Reuters isn’t only facing charges by the Guild over changes to pay: the agency has also been brought to task by the Guild for its social media policy, which bans employees from updating personal Twitter accounts with posts which, in the words of the company, ‘would damage the reputation of Reuters News or Thomas Reuters’.

As the statement from the Guild points out:

A union activist was “reminded” of the policy after responding to a senior manager’s call to “join the (Twitter) conversation on making Reuters the best place to work” with a tweet that said: “One way to make this the best place to work is to deal honestly with Guild members.”